Ageism really stinks

Welcome to this week’s issue of Ageing Reframed!

At the Invox conference in Melbourne last week, an older care recipient spoke on stage about her experiences with the sector. She also spoke more broadly about ageing, joking about the targeted ads she receives based on her age, despite never having searched for anything related to them.

One of the products was a soap marketed to “remove the smell of old people”, sold on Amazon, under this exact description.

In other words, an advertising system read her age and served her a product whose job was to tell her she smells.

It reminded me of a study I came across a few years ago. Researchers surveyed 2,035 people aged 50 to 80. Of these, 93.4% regularly experienced at least one of ten forms of everyday ageism.

The most common was internalised ageism, reported by 81.2% of participants. Ageist messages were reported by 65.2%, while 44.9% reported experiencing ageism in the way another person treated them.

The researchers also found that people scoring one standard deviation higher on their measure of everyday ageism had between 59% and 110% higher odds of a poor outcome across the four health measures they examined.

The thing is, someone entering care at 84 has not suddenly encountered ageism at 84. They have spent decades being told, directly and indirectly, that getting older means becoming frail, dependent, irrelevant, unattractive or incapable.

By the time they enter care, some of those messages may have become part of how they see themselves.

That is what makes ageism particularly insidious. It does not have to come from another person in the room. After years of exposure, it can start speaking in your own voice.

Join us for the first Ageing Reframed panel.

Our sector has embraced dignity and person-centred care. It has paid far less attention to identity — the person's sense of who they are — and the part it plays in how people make decisions and adopt behaviours. Whether someone seeks help, stays on a medication, or accepts support at all often turns on whether the step sits with who they take themselves to be.

The panel works through that across three live problems: ageing in place and the family carers who sustain it; delayed help-seeking and medication; and culturally safe everyday care under the new Aged Care Act. With geriatrician Dr Sanka Amadoru, and Behaviour ID's Mat Crompton and Kris White.

Cabin crew. easyJet's cabin crew aged over 50 has grown 127% since it started recruiting older workers in 2022, and its over-60s have almost quadrupled. Applications for several hundred more UK roles open this month.

Kinless in care. Older Australians in long-term care with no partner and no living children were nearly three times as likely to report severe loneliness as those with both, and those with children but no partner twice as likely. Across the whole care sample, 33.6% reported severe loneliness.

Purpose later on. A chartered psychologist proposes reorientation as an alternative to the reinvent-yourself-at-60 advice: keep an energy log for a week, then let go of the commitments that leave you flat.

Night owl. Jiang Yueqin is 101, stays up late watching television, eats a lots of snacks and wakes up late. Her routine went viral because it contradicts the familiar “wake up early, eat green vegetables, and meditate” longevity narrative.

Each week, I review developments in ageing and aged care and what they mean in practice. If this was useful, forward it to someone in the sector who'd appreciate it.

See you Tuesday!

George Gouzounis

P.S. I speak at conferences and industry events — my website has more.

Questions, disagreements, or something you'd like me to cover? Get in touch.